*review* WWRp JEA Marine MK3 Bertie

I’ve been downsizing my collection of WWRp for the past year. This is mainly due to space. My WWRp collection shares the same shelf, nay the same real estate (highly sought after and increasingly limited) I have at my disposal for my Action Portable Tomorrow Kings. That plan was emphasised even more when the Yellow Hornets 4 pack, De Plume 2 and De Plume 3 packs came in. Those automatically almost doubling my collection and has left me.. space-less. Edge to edge, there is absolutely no where to put even a single additional 1/12 figure.

Turns out, unless you are tied to the linear this-is-how-it’s-meant-to-be-and-thus-MUST-be type of collector/enthusiast thought process.. having no more available space on your WWRp shelf shouldn’t cause you stress when considering a single WWRp Mk3 Bertie or even three.

I’ll explain myself in a bit, but first…

PACKAGING

The box Mr. JEA arrived in is very reminiscent of his bigger (MUCH bigger) brothers. A few simple graphical embellishments and a rasterized photo of the figure. It’s a very clean presentation, if a bit unexciting.

WHAT’S INCLUDED

MK3 Bertie comes with only a few accessories. A gaggle of bags and a very cool sawed off shotgun make up the lot of it. The bags themselves are really well made, being stiff enough to hold their shape and feature some really nice contrasty panels. The shotgun is an impressive looking weapon right out the box. Even at 1/12th, the reaction you’ll have is probably going to be very much like what it was when/if you saw the 1/6th version … you’ll find yourself saying, “Damn, now that’s a big gun”.

THE BREAKDOWN

Well, I had a plan for this shoot. I wanted to take my new WWRp Mk3 Bertie and some of his buddies out into some nearby woodsy areas and take some cool photo’s where JEA would look right at home. It was going to be the best shoot yet!

I’m glad I opened him before making the trek, because right off the bat it became clear that someone at the 3A factory had forgotten their super glue the morning my toy was born. The front bag clip had fallen out. Luckily it fell right back into the box I’d just taken it out of or I’d probably lost it in the dust bunnies and fur balls currently inhabiting my living room floor.

So instead of a jungle trek, I settled on the stoop right outside my front door. Also note that for most of the shots, I left the front hook off for fear of dropping and losing it mid shoot. If you like, just try to imagine Bertie wearing a giant fanny pack in the photo’s he’s lacking it in.

OK, back to business. Here’s the MK3 Bertie all kitted up and ready for serious business.

A refresher. MK3 Bertie is the next level/upgrade of the MK2 Bertie. You may see the naming logic there. While the MK2 Berties (who ran around on tiny legs and stood roughly the same height as their human compadre’s) carried a bevy of mini guns, pistols and machete’s/severed heads; the MK3 Berties only have two options: A and B. Mode A come toting the massive shotgun you see JEA with above, while Mode B (click here for a peak) have two ridiculous (aka awesome) shoulder canon’s. So you might hear adjectives like “big” and “massive” tossed around quite a bit when one refers to an MK3. I’m still trying to imagine what a shotgun blast from a shotgun that size would do to.. well, anything.

Out of the box and on the ledge, the first thing I noticed about this guy is just how well done the paint app is on him. I may sound like a broken record here because amazing paint is something 3A can generally do with their eye’s closed (something they unfortunately might have tried last year with the zomb 2.0… ZING!) and I’ve praised it in almost all my reviews. Still, the first MK3 Bertie out the gate aims to please with the quality being right up there with the OG Berties and Brambles. He’s a little grimier but every bit as detailed and awesome looking as his big brother as well. There are a ton of random pops of rust and colors sprinkled all over him that really keeps your eye moving around. There’s parts rusted in one color that didn’t carry over to other parts, breaking up the look even more. It has in spades two of the key things that pulled me into 3A in the first place, a great robot design with amazingly realistic weathering. At this scale it’s pretty astounding how much they were able to cram in there without him appearing muddy, dull or overdone. I dig all the decals too.. yes, even the little black circles/spots.

The articulation is on par with other “cylinder” bots in the 1/12 family (also identical to the 1/6 MK3). Basically his body is made up of several swivel joints with the bulk of actual usable articulation being in his arms and hands. One thing I LOVE on my 1/6 MK3 Berties are their hands. They’re just so easy to get great gestures with. In 1/12th the general idea is the same, but my Bertie’s fingers seemed pretty loose, not tiny-Dropcloth-finger loose, but looser than any of my other WWRp Berties, Brambles or Armstrongs. It’s a minor gripe and not as extreme as the afore mentioned Droppy’s limp digits as well as an issue you may not experience, but it is a gripe all the same. What’s important though is that he can still hold his shotgun well enough without having to worry about it slipping out of his hands at the slightest bump.

The one thing that bothers me about Mk3’s in general is that there really are only so many poses you can do with them. As I mentioned a second ago, all the articulation is in his arms and hands. Waving, pointing, throwing gangs signs and flipping off the camera are par the course with them. Once loaded up with his shotgun, you get yourself a handful of other ways to set him. Pointing the gun, at ease with the gun, resting on the gun, shouldering the gun, using the gun as a golf club, etc etc. But once you’ve exhausted those, you’re done. Set and forget.

Still, just like the MK2 Berties the articulation is completely appropriate here. A necessary evil courtesy of one of my favorite Ashley Wood bot designs. So I guess that it’s not so much a knock against it but rather a comment on how much more time I spend messing with my other more poseable toys on the shelf. I think on some level I’m just waiting for the Mk4 or another bot (like Caesar?) to come along that’s just as playable as my APTKs or Droplcoths are.

You remember those bags I was saying were so well made at the beginning of this post? Well, now comes the part of the review where I tell you how much I hate them. Yes, they’re well stitched and crafted. Yes, they look really nice with the contrasting colors, working zippers and stitching. Yes, a WWRp De Plume WILL fit in the front fanny pack if need be. These are all obvious positives. What I hate is the way they “attach” to Berts body. You will literally knock these bags off your Bertie exactly three dozen times a dozen before you even get him from box to shelf. They FLY off. At times lunging for the floor while simultaneously becoming invisible. Sometimes seemingly on their own accord, one will go spinning across the floor behind a dresser impossible to retrieve, lost forever.

My 1/6 MK3’s bags fall off occasionally, but I think their size alone gives them enough heft to stay put 90% of the time. These wee bags weigh almost less than air. A sincere breeze could probably knock them off. I think I’m going to try and hunt down a spare belt strap from a 1/6 figure of some sort and see if I can fashion a belt similar to the old MK2 style belt. Kick the fanny pack to the curb. I think I like the look better without it anyway.

And that leads me to my final thoughts and the point where I try to make my ramblings in the intro about shelf space a little more crystal. I’m not saying that shelf space won’t be an issue with these guys at all. That they somehow become a negative entity that will equal in space savings to what they are to their ocularly apparent physical dimensions. No.

I’m just saying that unless you really can’t let your food touch, you have quite a few options as to where you can stick this guy… aaannnd that sounded dirtier than it should have.

In WWRp (1/12 scale) he’s the biggest bot on the block. It looks cool and it’s the intended fit.

But check this out, put a 1/6 square next to him and..

Not bad, huh? Almost meant to be. Now look at him hanging out with Jung De Plume and Jungler Grunt. It’s like hes’ made to be there. He’s may no longer be the biggest and baddest but it works pretty damn well, I’d say. Also, posed up next to these guys, his shotgun is almost to a feasible scale.

But where I think the real money might be… facing him off against a horde of Zombs.

(ed’s note: two zombs = horde today)

All we need now is an official (or unofficial) Warbot in that scale and we’ll be good to go. You can put this guy just about anywhere in your collection, wherever you have a bit of free space and he should fit right in.

One thing to keep in mind however is that not all mixing and matching of toy scales will give desired results…

…or does it?

There’s something of a nostalgic factor to the MK3 Bertie. The second I opened him I found myself filled with many of the same feelings and thoughts I had when I first opened my WWRp MK2 Jea Bertie almost two years ago.

“Wow, he looks great.”

“Sweet paint and weathering.”

“Check out that gun.”

“Cool, you can pose the fingers!”

But there was one thing notably missing. The thrill I normally feel when I get a new 3A toy.

It took me a few drafts of this review to figure out why that was. You see, even though I just got him today there’s very little about him that is actually new to me. Not only is he simply a smaller scale version of a toy I’ve had for about 8 months, he’s essentially the same as the first 3A bot I ever purchased. Same articulation, same paint, very similar overall appearance. Overall MK3 is a bigger version of more of the same. You decide whether that’s a good or bad thing.

FINAL SUMMARY

So ends my waxing and waning about WWRp MK3 Bertie JEA. Other than being pretty much a smaller version of a toy I already have, I didn’t find much to grumble about. He compares extremely favorably to his larger brother, so if you have one of those you have a good idea of what to expect. I do wish the bags were on a belt strap or simply had a tighter fit to the clips so they wouldn’t jump to their deaths every 5 seconds. Also the limited amount of articulation is starting to become more and more apparent to me even if it doesn’t detract from the character of the piece at all. Berties are still cool. I may be slimming down my WWRp collection but I’m really glad I picked this guy up. In fact, I regret not also snagging Night Watch mode B when he was available. (Actually I regret selling my entire WWRp NW collection early last year, but that’s a story for another day). The new Berties are just as much fun as the old and I believe thanks to their size, a bit more versatile in where and how you can display them in your collection or play with them in the neighborhood sandbox.